I moved to St. Louis the weekend the Football Cardinals left town under cover of darkness. I worked for Venture Stores for 8 years working my way up from the warehouse to the IT Center before they closed. Then I joined the Navy and have lived in Virginia for the last 10 years. My folks still live in O’Fallon. I’ve been drinking Budweiser for 26 years. I have to say…..home just isn’t home anymore. Good luck to all the AB Employees. It looks like it’s Miller Time.

The report from Cato institute is so true today because due to the political ideology that has been taking place we cannot survive in this country without foreign investment and dependency on foreigners, we are at their mercy. We must accept this now, and American citizens are not even equipped to compete. We have had politicians who were traitors to the American people for a long time now.

The question is where do we go from here? We will never be the first rate powerful country that we were because your politicians sold us down the drain. It is too ironic for words, based on what they have been placing into White Americans psyche as to what they are to fear, having them fear all the wrong things for take their eyes off of what they were really doing, selling us all down the drain. This is why foreigners call us stupid.

d.walker, your a treat.

interesting article on page B3 in today’s wall street journal. Apparently, AB had a deal about done to acquire the rest of modelo, but then called InBev to see if they would offer more than the $65.00. Looks like they could have saved AB if they wanted too. Guess it is time to get off Brito’s case.

another incoherent posting from d.walker. What is the point?

To Mike Yurgec - Come on, Budweiser was not the only American beer. Nor is it today. Switch to an American beer and go on with life. You will probably find a beer you like better anyway. (And Bud Light was designed for woman and people who don’t really like the taste of beer but can’t admit it. No tears over that tastless brew.)

D Walker:

“Yes we must now deal with the fact that we are now global, and the fact that this globalization took place while we the people were all trusting our leaders and not really knowing what was going on until we were in over our heads. Yes, we are now forced not only to deal with it but, ACCEPT IT and attempt to elect leaders who now are willing to pass laws that able us to be more competitive in the way of education instead of all the political ideology that we have been victim of that have hurt the citizens of this country because our politicians went global without its citizens knowledge or our citizens being prepared. This was the responsibility of government, and they failed in their duty to include the citizens in on what was happening and the need to get serious about preparation. It was all orchestrated over a period of time knowing that this country was not prepared for such globalization and knowing that it would be devastating to our society.”

I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone that our economy has opened up over time. We’ve been heading that way for 80 years after we saw how isolating our country’s economy helped lead to the Great Depression. Our leaders should do a better job communicating about globalization–I agree with that. For example, it’s ridiculous for someone like Mitt Romney, who knows better, to go to Michigan and promise that if they vote for him he’ll bring back all the manufacturing jobs that were lost there. That’s a lie that helps no one besides him. Even Obama knows he isn’t bringing those jobs back.

Still, it’s hard for a politician to prepare us for big changes like globalization. People don’t like to be told what they should do. It’s in our nature to be reactive and not proactive to big shifts in the economy. This affects companies, too–look at Kodak. That doesn’t mean we have the ability to stick our head in the sand and keep the status quo; all that does is leave us behind everyone else who adjusts (like the digital camera makers did to Kodak).

“Yes there is pain, lots of it for citizens. Please explain what benefits and great gains you are speaking about that our citizens are all gaining from globalization? Why are you not speaking about the pain that have not even begun because our government went head first into globalization without its citizens being prepared to compete. They were just plain stupid because they did not care and was stupidly consumed with self-interests, not the interests of the citizens and society.”

The benefits are obvious. You enjoy them everyday. First, everything available in the market becomes cheaper when competition exists (outside of select markets such as monopolies). Secondly, we don’t have everything we need as a nation–we don’t have the natural resources to live the way we do. Globalization/Trade is the only way we can acquire the resources we need. Third, we are able to import technological advancements from around the world in exchange for our technology. Without trade and globalization, the steam engine never gets out of England. It’s not like that has changed today–innovation that occurs in Japan, Europe, etc. comes here and improves our lives. We don’t have the opportunity to receive this innovation when we close our market.

We’ve all benefitted immensely from these three factors.

“Paul, you state:

< We get to benefit when a Japanese company makes a car that uses less oil.

This is the craziest thing that I have ever heard. Shouldn’t we be benefiting from a American developed product that uses less oil? Why isn’t our government and corporations interested in the little talent that we do have in this country. There are presently college kids successfully experimenting with converting automobiles into ones that use very little gasoline and it works! The talent in this area goes ignored, would you care to expound on why? Could it be because there was and is no real interest in developing automobiles to use less gasoline? I think so, all evidence points to just this.”

You misread my point. I referred to the future, not the past here. It’s a hypothetical. Besides, have you looked at auto sales lately? No one wants an SUV or a truck. We want fuel efficient vehicles now.

Our government and companies have invested billions here in energy efficient technology for autos and other energy hogging equipment. Do you think the more energy efficient light bulbs came about out of thin air? Our companies are simply going where the best bang for their buck is. Much of that is here in the US. Why do you think Pfizer is a major employer in St. Louis? They know we have the talent here to help them advance as a global company, and they’ve invested accordingly.

Your comment has this fundamental idea that everything can happen at the same cost anywhere in the world. That’s just not true. We shouldn’t be allocating our people and our resources to do things that others can do more efficiently than us. That makes our economy smaller and our people poorer in comparison to what we can be. It makes us wait longer for technological innovation that we need to stay competitive.

“< The difference is that our work products add more value than theirs do. < That’s how we’re able to afford all of this.

What work products of the U.S. are you speaking about that add more value? And who are theirs?”

Every single thing we sell in a competitive economy like ours adds more value than other countries’ work. If we sell it, it has to have more value to the consumer than every other available substitute does–the consumer would not buy it. I’m referring to both goods and services.

“< It’s not an easy world for the blue- collar worker–I recognize that.
< Think about what we offer as a society in terms of education, benefits, < infrastructure, etc. That all has a cost. Places like China cannot
< afford to have the things that we have.

When I think in terms of what the U.S. offer in terms of education compared to the foreigner’s countries who are being handed all the high tech jobs through the HB1 visas, (NAFTA), it shows a bleak picture for U.S. citizens not the picture that you are envisioning. The sad truth, even Americas who are high tech qualified are being replaced by foreigners because of cheaper labor instead of offering the American less pay. American’s high-tech qualified are being forced into temporary contract jobs offering no benefits. Benefits are being lost to Americans daily at frightening rates. Infrastructure, you are speaking about as if we are okay in that area? Our infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. It is in frightening condition”

You are aware that we have a shortage of people who can actually do hi-tech work in this country, right? All we’re doing is shooting ourselves in the foot by NOT having more H1-B visas (which typically cover white collar jobs requiring at least a bachelor’s degree). If Microsoft can’t do the work here because they can’t physically find people who have the education to do the job, they’ll do it overseas and pay the taxes there. Those are high paying jobs that inject much money into our economy. Besides, the H1-B allows us to steal the cream of the crop from other nations–we’re taking their engineers and their scientists and keeping the profits from their work here. How is that a bad deal in a country where unemployment for people with a 4-year degree is 2%? We desperately need more people with degrees, not less.

“Paul, you state:

< It’s much easier to add that value by taking advantage of our education
< system and providing a service. It’s a fact of life. As our standard of < living increases, we have to shift more and more away from manual labor < in order to continue to differentiate ourselves from countries with
< labor but without the intellectual capital.

Are you saying that a service industry is more valuable than having and production industry? Taking advantage of our education system in what way, advertising, business, degrees, all those interests of study that are non-technical? This is what it sounds like you are stating, and if it is I question your common sense, and you are too text-book orientated on many of your other thoughts.”

I’m saying that the largest potential for US gain comes from areas where we can have the largest competitive advantage over our competition. It’s easier to have an intellectual capital edge and not a labor edge in a world where everyone has two hands but not everyone has our education. That is as obvious a conclusion as any in the world. Our manufacturing edge on things like Boeing plans or Intel chips comes from our ability to use our intellectual capital to make specialized products and not low-technology, mass produced wares like underwear or toys.

D–what do you think leads to the biggest advances in the world? Ideas. The most non-technical thing there is. Ideas give us better products. What leads to Americans having these ideas? The way our education system develops people and how our free market allows them to try to turn their idea into a product that benefits us all. The developed world is not labor-driven anymore; it is driven by intellectual capital. We cannot have our standard of living without relying on them.

D. Walker–You are aware that the Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank that supports globalization, right? If you want to quote one of their policies, you’d better read the rest of them before espousing them.

Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can’t figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I’ll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I’ve been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

Gordon Gekko

For anyone that wants a way to show their solidarity against this buyout: https://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/keep-bud-american a campaign that shows we will not support the InBev company.